Uploading a test site and google

[Vic_linen]

Hi,

Dont know if this has been covered but I've searched on here and it didnt come up.

I uploaded a test site a few weeks ago and my SEO company has now told me google indexed all the pages, I took the test site down about a week ago and its caused havok with the sites rankings on google.... for example we were page 1 on google for bed linen, now we are page 8!! I've had a look on google web tools and its showing a list as long as my arm of broken links, all from the test site. What a nightmare!

Has this happened to anyone else ??

[guccij]

You could have edited (could still do so) robots.txt to disallow the test directory ...

Any self-respecting "SEO company" would have warned you about this if they had a nano of an idea how Actinic and Google work.

[Vic_linen]

Just uploaded a new robots.txt file, thanks for that.

[Mark H]

Have you been given any indication why the test site caused havoc with existing listings? I guess the answer is no or you wouldn't be asking here, but I would have thought the SEO company would have some idea?

[guccij]

There have been some changes again in the last couple of weeks to search results in Google, I've read.
Could be that.
Or, it could be the SEO bollox is trying to explain away why their service is failing.

[Duncan Rounding]

It shouldn't be necessary to create a robots.txt file to disallow indexing of a site in Test Mode.

Since v904 there is code in the outer layout (at least for the supplied themes) that will add the robots meta tag to disallow indexing.

If it's not there in your outer layout then you can add the following before the closing </head> of your design:

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22InTestMode%22%20%2f%3e" >
	<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
</actinic:block>

[pinbrook]

As well as removing the test site and/or telling robots not to index it you should now do 301 redirects from the indexed pages to the real site pages. this will appease Google and get visitors back on those URLs

Additionally to be tidy you need a 404 error page to mop up, a page with your left hand nav and a message to tell peeps the page they were looking for no longer exsists but please use the navigation or search to find something else.

And then read up on SEO as you will probably do a better job yourself!

[Duncan Rounding]

It surprising how many people allow the site to be indexed in Test Mode (presumably many sites are earlier than v904). Try this in Google: inurl:/acatalog/test

[Duncan Rounding]

Also if you are going to use a robots.txt file to disallow the test directory then bear in mind that the test directory is a sub directory of acatalog and not in the domain root.

Hence check that Disallow: /test/ will cover this. If not you may need to change it to Disallow: /acatalog/test/ BUT then you may need to Allow: /acatalog/. This can get confusing so make sure of your syntax otherwise you'll either not disallow Test or worse still disallow your whole site.

Personally I don't use Test Mode and prefer to upload to a test domain or subdomain which is easier to manage.

[leehack]

For £50 a year why would anyone not just buy a completely separate domain and use it as a test domain, thus impacting on nothing. Test site was probably spidered if you provided a link in the forum to it for example.

[pinbrook]

Personally I don't use Test Mode and prefer to upload to a test domain or subdomain which is easier to manage.

Me neither - if you have a large site and want to swap from live to test on a regular basis, actinic keeps trying to remove the test site.

although to run a test and a live site on one pc with sub domains is only possible with multi site, if you have catalog then to run 2 sites live and test requires 2 pcs (or sandboxing multiboot etc etc)

[Vic_linen]

It shouldn't be necessary to create a robots.txt file to disallow indexing of a site in Test Mode.

Since v904 there is code in the outer layout (at least for the supplied themes) that will add the robots meta tag to disallow indexing.

If it's not there in your outer layout then you can add the following before the closing </head> of your design:

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22InTestMode%22%20%2f%3e" >
	<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
</actinic:block>

I recently changed to Silver theme, couldnt see this piece of code in the ouer layout so I've added it thanks.

It the first time I've used the test mode, needless to say I dont think I'll be using it again.

[AndyBorrett]

If you follow the instructions at the back of the aug you can set
up your own test server on your own pc. I find it much quicker than uploading to a 'real' server.